Fickle Skies

From Robert Frost's Two Tramps in Mud Time

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
when the sun is out and the wind is still
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak
a cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
a wind comes off the frozen peak
and you're two months back in the middle of March.

Frost was, of course, a New Englander and he had it down pat. This is what we've been living with for most of a month now and it's got the whole of April to go. Fickleness is both tiring and irritating whether in weather or people. You don't know what coat or jacket to put on and if you forget your hat you'll want it badly. With fickle people you can't know what they'll say or do next and you can't rely on them to do what they say. The most famous example of a public opinion about fickleness is the Duke's aria in Rigoletto, the famous "la donna es mobile." This is usually translated, "woman is fickle." In fact, of course, it's the Duke who's so fickle. Some changeability adds spice to life -- including weather. Isn't the occasional snow storm lovely to look at? But it's too much when one follows another as it did this year for much of the country. Isn't a sudden summer thunder storm just the thing to add a bit of drama to the too sweet perfection of a summer day? But I'm downright tired of the changeable weather now, I long for warm spring days with golden forsythia and dancing tulips.